Looking for ideas for my AI project

[Pangloss]

I'm looking for a few suggestions for a programming project for my Master's class on Artificial Intelligence. Here are the terms of the project:

 

Course Project

The purpose of the course project is for the student to demonstrate an

understanding of the various AI techniques and concepts. The student will

develop a software application that demonstrates the use of one of the AI

concepts covered in the course. All programming must be done in Java. The

project must be a standalone application developed using Java 2 and not a Java applet or servlet.

 

Project Deliverables

Project Plan - The project plan will be limited to one page and will include a description of the proposed application, including the AI technique(s) that will be used, and a description of the application process (i.e. what it will do). The project plan will be reviewed by the instructor and comments and recommended modifications will be provided as necessary. The project plan must be approved by the instructor before the student begins work on the actual software application. The project plan is worth 5% of a student’s final grade.

 

Project Report - The final deliverable will include a copy of the well-documented source code used in the application and a one page overview of the application that describes the AI techniques used, the application process, and the results provided by the application. The project application is worth 20% of a student’s final grade.

 

Any suggestions?

[LucidDreamer]

I read somewhere that a wasp displays a certain amount of intelligence when it becomes lost and it is unable to find its nest. It will use an every increasing spiral pattern until it comes across a landmark that it recognizes and then it will use other methods to find its way back. I think you could emulate this phenomenon with an AI program. The user, or an automated function, could place the wasp in a random location on a map and the wasp will use its intelligence to find its way back. It would use landmarks and overcome barriers along the way.

 

As an alternative, the wasp could begin looking for its nest by moving about randomly. After each attempt to find its nest it learns to change its searching method so that it finds the nest faster the next time. It would be my guess that eventually the wasp would use the spiral pattern to find its nest. You would be reenacting the evolution of the homing intelligence of the wasp.

[timo]

I read a very interesting and quite easy article about pathfinding using neural nets on http://www.gamedev.net some time (might be a year or two) ago which might be interesting for you. Let´s see if I find it ...

 

EDIT: It´s not exactly the one I was looking for but a similar one: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1988.asp

[Dave]

Personally I've always been interested in neural nets, and using them for image recognition. I've never done any real work in the area (so I can't provide much more information) but it's a decent suggestion at least

[bascule]

I'd do something with ontologies... maybe import the WordNet ontology and try to make something which processes natural language and dynamically expands the ontology (maybe using a Markov process?)

[Pangloss]

Very interesting suggestions, thank you.

[Pangloss]

That's interesting as well basc. You've got me thinking... you know how much I like politics... I wonder if I could use something like Berkeley's FrameNet approach to parse political blogs and advise a browser as to whether they are "liberal" or "conservative" or "moderate", etc.

 

(Just a random thought. I've got a couple more days to write a proposal on this.)

[ecoli]

Like that thing on the web where you paste in text and it tells you whether it thinks you're male or female?

[Pangloss]

I haven't seen that one.

[Pangloss]

Actually, thinking on it some more, a Bayesian approach might be the most straightforward way to tackle the idea I mentioned above (determining the political bias of a document). But I guess I have to get my keywords from somewhere, so the ontology aspect may still be relevent.

[Bio-Hazard]

I got an idea. How about you make an AI that travels the universe looking for energy crystals. Also make another AI so they can be interactive with each other. One an antagonist and the other the protagonist.

 

Name one of them Optimus Prime.

[Pangloss]

Lol, you mean some sort of scientology detector? That's actually kind of a compelling idea.